One Last Breath
by Paradox.bookjunkie
Summary: He wanted many things. This was not one of them. Draco and Albus's POV on the Astronomy Tower. WARNING: Canon Character death.


**Draco Malfoy and Albus Dumbledore.**

**Not slash.**

**For the In-Character Draco Malfoy Competition my Maria from Ravenclaw**

**Everything you recognize belongs to J.K. Rowling. **

**I wrote this listening to **_One Last Breath_** by Creed. I don't own the lyrics.**

_Draco:_

_Blue._

_Blue eyes that usually sparkled with light._

_Blue eyes that now reflected the sickly green colour of the Mark._

_How would he do this?_

_How _could_ he do this?_

_He stared into eyes as blue as ice, and he tightened his grip on his wand._

_The wood was slick with sweat._

_His white knuckled grip on the wand was starting to hurt his fingers._

_He licked his lips nervously._

_He thought of his family, he thought of the consequences._

_Weighing both in the balance._

_What was that old Latin saying his father had taught him?_

Mene mene tekel upharasin.

_You have been weighed in the balance and been found wanting._

_He licked his lips again._

_He wanted many things._

_This was not one of them._

Albus:

He stared down the quivering tip of the black wand.

The rampart's stone was cold beneath his hands as he leaned against them, and his brain was whirling as it tried to separate reality from the illusions that floated in front of him.

His sister waved at him, her smile shining as brightly as a second sun. He reached out to caress her lovely face, but she vanished, leaving him with an arm out, like an old man in need of help.

And, he supposed, he was.

But one in need of help is not always unaware of his surroundings and the need for help did not shadow the urgency of his plan.

Instead of looking down the wand, he flicked his bright blue eyes up to meet a pair of gray ones.

They were cold, stony, but a flicker of self doubting lingered in them.

"Draco, Draco," he rasped, placing his hand on the ground in front of him again. "You are not a killer." He tried to sit up, but the potion had made his body weak, and he slumped backwards, stabilizing himself against the stone wall.

"How do you know?" The sharp voice rang through the Astronomy Tower. He tried to keep himself from frantically looking around. Where was Severus? "You don't know what I'm capable of!" The young boy continued, slight hysteria edging his voice. "You don't know what I've done!"

Draco, Draco. Of course I do. Albus looked pityingly at the boy, one who could have so much potential if only he'd _act_…

"Oh yes, I do," He said mildly. "You almost killed Katie Bell and Ronald Weasley. You have been trying, with increasingly desperation, to kill me all year. Forgive me, Draco, but they have been feeble attempts…So feeble, to be honest, that I was wondering whether your heart was really in it."

"It has been in it!" Draco straightened his shoulders and shoved the wand he held closer to Albus's heart. "I've been working on it all year, and tonight-"

A muffled yell cut him off, causing him to look nervously behind him.

"Someone is putting up a good fight." He plowed on, willing Severus to hurry up. He could feel his strength failing as the potion took hold. His thoughts were muddling up in his head. What had he been saying? Death Eaters! How had he managed to get the Death Eaters into Hogwarts? "But you were saying, yes, you have managed to introduce Death Eaters into my school, which, I admit, I thought was impossible…How did you do it?"

The boy was silent, listening for anymore commotion below them, paralyzed. "Perhaps you ought to get on with the job alone," he suggested. "What if your back up has been thwarted by my guard?" He knew Draco wouldn't act without the others. He just had to waste time until Severus got there. "As you perhaps realized, there are members of the Order of the Phoenix here tonight, too. After all, you don't really need help…I have no wand at the moment…I cannot defend myself."

The boy merely stared at him, eyes almost vulnerable under the green light of the Mark.

"I see." He said kindly, when the boy didn't say anything. "You are afraid to act until they join you." How could he say this, when he, too, was afraid that Severus wouldn't come, wouldn't finish the last part of the plan.

Or, at least, the last part in which he was involved.

"I'm not afraid!" Draco snarled. "It's you who should be scared!"

"But why?" he asked calmly. "I do not think you will kill me, Draco. Killing is not nearly as easy as the innocent believe…So, tell me, while we wait for your friends…how did you smuggle them here? It seems to have taken you a long time to work out how to do it."

Draco, took several deep, nervous gulps and pointed his drooping hand once again at Albus's heart, as if he would spring out of his slumped position on the ramparts with another wand in hand and kill him in one blow.

Then, as if he couldn't help himself, he said, "I had to mend that broken Vanishing Cabinet that no one's used for years. The one Montague got stuck in last year."

"Aaaah." He groaned, closing his eyes for a moment. A sweet, sweet moment. "That was clever…There is a pair, I take it?"

"In Borgin and Burke's," said Draco, "and they make a kind of passage between them. Montague told me that when he was stuck in the Hogwarts one, he was trapped in limbo, but sometimes he could hear what was going on at school, and sometimes what was going on in the shop, as if the cabinet was traveling between them, but he couldn't make anyone hear him…In the end, he managed to Apparate out, even though he'd never passed his test. He nearly died doing it. Everyone thought it was a really good story, but I was the only one who realized what it meant – even Borgin didn't know – I was the only one who realized that there could be a way into Hogwarts through the cabinets if I fixed the broken one."

Albus opened his eyes. The boy was cunning, sharp, just what a Slytherin was supposed to be. He'd though the same about another promising young person long ago, too.

Tom Riddle was also cunning. So cunning, that he became the most powerful wizard of their age.

But Draco wasn't like Tom.

He didn't kill or hurt. He could see behind those young eyes that he didn't wish pain on anyone, he just followed the rules. His father's rules. His father's master's rules.

"Very good," he murmured, bringing himself back into the present, desperately trying to force his eyes to stay open. "So the Death Eaters were able to pass from Borgin and Burke's into the school to help you…a clever plan, a clever plan…and, as you say, right under my nose."

"Yeah," Draco, strangely seeming to draw courage and comfort from his words, agreed. "Yeah, it was!"

"But there were times," Albus went on, "weren't there, when you were not sure you would succeed in mending the cabinet? And you resorted to crude and badly judged measures such as sending me a cursed necklace that was bound to reach the wrong hands…poisoning mead that there was only the slightest chance I would drink…"

"Yeah, well, you didn't realize who was behind that stuff, did you?" Draco sneered as Albus slid a little farther down the rampart. He could feel the strength in his legs fading, and he was growing weaker by the second.

"As a matter of fact, I did." He closed his eyes, wishing he would just hear the high, cold voice of Severus, and then his pain could end, he could be free… "I was sure it was you."

He could hear the shock in Draco's voice, if he couldn't see it.

"Why didn't you stop me, then?" he asked.

"I tried, Draco. Professor Snape has been keeping watch over you on my orders –"

"He hasn't been doing your orders, he promised my mother –" Draco started.

"He's a double agent, you stupid old man, he isn't working for you, you just think he is!"

"We must agree to differ on that, Draco. It so happens that I trust Professor Snape –"

"Well, you're losing your grip, then!" Draco sneered. "He's been offering me plenty of help…" Draco's words faded out as Albus tried desperately to hold onto his consciousness. He sought through the dark, stumbling. He was blindly searching. He forced his eyes open as Draco came to the end of his sentence. "…He'll be nothing compared to me, noting!"

"Very gratifying." He replied as neutrally as possible. Suddenly, his thoughts came a little clearer. He would not let another wronged Slytherin slip though his fingers without trying his best. "We all like appreciation for our own hard work, of course. But you must have had an accomplice, all the same…someone in Hogsmeade, someone who was able to slip Katie the, aaaah…"

Albus closed his eyes again and nodded slowly. Rosmerta. How could he have been so _stupid_? "…of course…Rosmerta. How long was she under the Imperius Curse?"

"Got there at last, have you?" He could hear Draco taunting him, but he felt like he was drifting away, like he was watching someone else control his body.

There was another yell from below, but he continued on, determined to waste more time until Severus got there. "So poor Rosmerta was forced to lurk in her own bathroom and pass the necklace to any Hogwarts student who entered the room unaccompanied? And the poisoned mead…well, naturally, Rosmerta was able to poison it for you and send it to Slughorn, believing that it was to be my Christmas present…Yes, very neat…very neat…Poor Mr. Filch would not, of course, think to check a bottle of Rosmerta's. Tell me, how long have you been communicating with Rosmerta? I thought we had all methods of communication in and out of the school monitored."

"Enchanted coins," said Malfoy, the wand in his hand shaking like a leaf. "I had one, and she had one and I could send her messages –"

"Isn't that the secret method of communication the group that called themselves Dumbledore's Army used last year?" he interrupted, feeling himself sink another inch lower on the wall.

"Yeah, I got the idea from them," Draco replied, smiling cunningly. "I got the idea of poisoning the mead from the Mudblood Granger as well; I heard her talking in the library about Filch not recognizing potions." Albus flinched.

"Please do not use that offensive word in front of me." Albus groaned. The boy laughed harshly.

"You care about me saying 'Mudblood' when I'm about to kill you?"

"Yes, I do." He said, struggling to keep upright as his feet slid on the cold stone floor. "But as for being about to kill me, Draco, you have had several long minutes now, we are quite alone, I am more defenseless than you could have dreamed of finding me, and you still have not acted…"

Draco's mouth contorted involuntarily, as though he was tasting something bitter, and Albus plowed on. "Now," he said. "About tonight. I am a little puzzled about how it happened…You knew that I had left the school? But of course," he said, bemusedly, answering his own question, "Rosmerta saw me leaving, she tipped you off using your ingenious coins, I'm sure."

"That's right," Draco replied. "But she said you were just going for a drink and you'd be back…"

"Well, I certainly did have a drink…And I came back…after a fashion," he mumbled. "So you decided to spring a trap for me?"

"We decided to put the Dark Mark over the tower and get you to hurry up here, to see who'd been killed." Draco admitted. "And it worked!"

"Well…yes and no…" Albus said. "But am I to take that nobody has been murdered?"

"Someone's dead." Draco responded, shivering. This was a boy – a man – that didn't enjoy killing. A man who did not take pride in other people's blood on his hands. So why did he have him at the end of his wand, threatening him with a white knuckled grip of a scared boy? "One of your people…I don't know who, it was dark…I stepped over a body…I was supposed to be waiting up here when you got back, only your Phoenix got in the way…"

"Yes, they do that." Albus replied, feeling a burst of pride in his chest. He was tired. So, so tired. If only he could close his eyes for a few moments…

There was a bang and shouts from below and he forced his eyelids open.

"There is little time one way or another," he continued. "So let's discuss your options, Draco."

"_My_ options!" said Draco loudly. "I'm standing here with a wand – I'm about to kill you–"

"My dear boy, let us have no more pretense about that. If you were going to kill me, you would have done it when you first disarmed me, you would not have stopped for this pleasant chat about ways and means."

"I haven't got any options!" Draco turned white as a sheet. "I've got to do it! He'll kill me! He'll kill my whole family!" There it was.

This man, who despised the idea of killing anyone, was driven to by a madman because he was following the rules, the rules of the very people he wanted to protect. Pity bloomed in Albus's chest.

"I appreciate the difficulty of your position," he replied softly. "Why else do you think I have not confronted you before now? Because I knew that you would have been murdered if Lord Voldemort realized that I suspected you."

Malfoy winced at the sound of the name.

"I did not dare speak to you of the mission with which I knew you had been entrusted, in case he used Legilimency against you," Albus lied, soothing him. "But now at last we can speak plainly to each other, no harm has been done, you have hurt nobody, though you are very lucky that your intentional victims survived…I can help you, Draco."

"No, you can't," Draco's tortured whisper came, full of emotion. "Nobody can. He told me to do it, or he'll kill me. I've got no choice."

"Come over to the right side, Draco," Albus urged gently. "We can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine. What is more, I can send members of the Order to your mother tonight to hide her likewise. Your father is safe at the moment in Azkaban…When the time comes, we can protect him too…Come over to the right side, Draco…you are no killer…" Malfoy stared at him as he forced these words through his lips.

"But I got this far, didn't I?" he asked slowly. "They thought I'd die in the attempt, but I'm here…and you're in my power…I'm the one with the wand…You're at my mercy…"

"No, Draco," Albus responded, correcting him. "It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now."

Draco didn't speak, contemplating what Albus had told him. His wand lowered a fraction of an inch –

But suddenly, he was pushed out of the way by four people bursting through the rampart's door. The Death Eaters had won the fight below, Albus noted, as he recognized three out of the raggedy bunch.

"Dumbledore cornered!" Amycus jeered, turning to his sister. "Dumbledore wandless, Dumbledore alone! Well done, Draco, well done!"

"Good evening, Amycus," Dumbledore replied politely. "And you've brought Alecto, too. Charming..."

Alecto tittered madly. "Think your little jokes'll help you on your deathbed, then?

"Jokes? No, no these are manners," Albus corrected.

"Do it," Albus looked at Fenrir, who stood nearest to Harry's hiding spot.

"Is that you, Fenrir?" he asked.

"That's right," he rasped. "Pleased to see me, Dumbledore?"

"No," Albus responded, distaste rippling through him. "I cannot say that I am."

Fenrir grinned, showing his pointed teeth, blood trickling down his chin.

"You know how much I like kids, Dumbledore," he sneered.

"Am I to take it that you are attacking even without the full moon now? This is most unusual…You have developed a taste for human flesh that cannot be satisfied once a month?" He asked, disgusted.

"That's right." Fenrir answered. "Shocks you, that, does it, Dumbledore? Frightens you?"

"Well, I cannot pretend it doesn't disgust me a little." He said truthfully. "And, yes, I am a little shocked that Draco here invited you, of all people, into the school where his friends live…"

"I didn't," murmured Draco. "I didn't know he was going to come –"

"I wouldn't miss a trip to Hogwarts, Dumbledore," Greyback interrupted. "Not when there are throats to be ripped out…Delicious, delicious…"

Albus felt a shiver run along his spine.

"I could do you for afters, Dumbledore," Fenrir continued.

"No," The fourth Death Eater, whom Albus didn't recognize, said sharply. "We've got orders. Draco's got to do it. Now, Draco, quickly."

Draco had more cowardly expressions hiding in the foggy depths of his eyes. He lowered his wand, as while they'd been talking Albus had sunk at least a foot lower on the rampart.

"He's not long in this world anyway, if you ask me!" Amycus observed, right for once in his life. "Look at him – what's happened to you, then, Dumb-y?"

"Oh, weaker resistance, slower reflexes, Amycus," Dumbledore replied lightly. "Old age, in short…One day, perhaps, it will happen to you…if you're lucky…"

"What's that mean, then, what's that mean?" yelled the Death Eater, aggravated. "Always the same, weren't yeh, Dumb-y, talking and doing nothing. I don't even know why the Dark Lord's bothering to kill yer! Come on, Draco, do it!

Another muffled yell came from below, but Albus could hardly concentrate. All he could see was the expression of panic that flashed across Draco's face and the tightening of his fingers around his wand, as the other Death Eater urged him on angrily.

"Now, Draco, quickly!"

The poor boys hand was shaking so badly he could hardly aim. Where in the world was Severus?

"I'll do it," Fenrir growled, moving toward Albus, his teeth bared in a menacing snarl.

"I said no!" The Death Eater shouted. There was a flash of light and Fenrir flew back against the ramparts. He snarled again, turning towards the man. Alecto turned to Draco.

"Draco, do it or stand aside so one of us –" she screeched loudly. She was interrupted as the door to the rampart burst open again, revealing Severus. Albus closed his eyes and leaned back against the cool stone. Finally. He could be done with pain and worry…

"We've got a problem, Snape," Amycus didn't look away from Albus, both his wand and eyes aimed at his heart. "The boy doesn't seem able – "

Albus was done with waiting. "Sevrus…" he pleaded, wincing as he did. He'd hardly ever pleaded for anything in his life, especially not this. But he wanted – needed to get away. Severus turned to him, repulsion etched in his angular features. "Severus, please…"

Severus looked into his eyes, black meeting blue, a wild look of desperation in his eyes, asking if he really had to do this. A little nod all he needed. Albus closed his eyes as Severus raised his wand.

One last breath. He was almost there.

He willed Harry to be safe and make the right decisions. He willed that he wouldn't hate him, and that he would stay true to his task no matter what they said about him. He hadn't wanted to put such a large burden on such young shoulders, but he knew he had to. Harry carried his burden accordingly and he had others to help him.

"_Avada Kedavra_!"

A green light flashed from Severus's wand, hitting Albus fully in the chest. He looked up at the Dark Mark that hung over head as he was hit, the last image he'd ever see frozen in his mind.

He fell backwards, lifeless, and toppled over the edge of the Astronomy Tower.

**A/N – Hope you liked. Sad, I know :(**

**Review!**

**First time I've really tried at writing Dumbledore's point of view…how was it? Did I suck?**

**Thanks to Maria from Ravenclaw for an AWESOME challenge!**

**I don't know if this is acceptable as it's in Albus's P.O.V. but...how did I do?  
**

**Paradox**


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